Project INDIGO-II
Project INDIGO-II was a highly classified supersoldier development program of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the successor to Project INDIGO. The goal of the project was to recruit, kidnap or reassign as many SPARTAN-III Commandos as possible into a separate chain of command from the bulk of their brethren, making it very similar to its predecessor project which attempted to do the same for SPARTAN-II Commandos. In addition to SPARTAN-IIIs, the project also ended up recruiting several JAVELINs and OLYMPIANs. Overview Though the SPARTAN-III Program was approved by some high-ranking ONI members - including Vice Admiral Parangosky, Rear Admiral Rich and Captain Gibson - many others harbored mistrust of the program's maker, Colonel Ackerson, and his intentions with the program. Notable suspicions included fear that Ackerson would use some of the Spartans for private operations, rather than those benefitting mankind as a whole, as well as disapproval for the new supersoldiers' purpose as ill-equipped suicide soldiers. Because of these and many other confidential reasons - such as the discovery of shady dealings between Ackerson and Rich - INDIGO-II was approved alongside the SPARTAN-III Program, though it was later discovered to also be involved with the second generation of the JAVELIN Project. For the duration of the program, INDIGO-II would end up acquiring an alarming number of Spartan-III operatives, through a mix of improper issuing of unfit-for-duty classifications and use of inside help - in some cases by Lieutenant Ambrose and Senior Chief Petty Officer Mendez themselves - to faking augmentation failures and performing outright kidnapping of candidates. In addition, some pieces of evidence suggest that INDIGO-II may have independently trained several of the candidates that were turned down for training by Ackerson or Ambrose, though not all of these received augmentations like their brethren. One of the larger efforts to carry out the goal of INDIGO-II was HEADHUNTER, approved by Parangosky and managed by DRACULA to create elite-trained pairs of Spartan-IIIs issued with better equipment and carrying out high-risk missions behind enemy lines, fueling its numbers by rotating out promising candidates from the main program in a variety of ways, while at the same time maintaining a five-man team of "reserves" (relegated to carrying out "mainstream" special operations, rather than the suicide behind-enemy-lines operations their brethren fought) - or "Winter" Team - its members ready to fill in for fallen or over-exhausted Headhunters when necessary. Other undertakings were less complicated, as in "merely" recruiting teams during or after the augmentation procedures, in most circumstances covered up as deaths caused by the augments, though in some cases - such as almost half the members of Winter Team - 'crippled' candidates relegated to non-combat duties were either still combat-capable (with some arrangements) or were treated to be so by new medical technology or specialized replacement body parts and consequently recruited into INDIGO-II. Similar methods were used to acquire personnel from the JAVELIN and OLYMPIAN projects, the well-known of these being Team Bravado and Amethyst Team, respectively. While most teams created or recruited by INDIGO-II were initially company-exclusive, IE each team's members were all from the same company, as casualties increased throughout the Human-Covenant War, it became more and more commonplace to merge units - the most notable (but not only) example of this practise being Noble Team. Through the old connections with INDIGO and new ones opened up over time (including projects ARES and MYRMIDON), the project also managed to occasionally acquire operatives of other Spartan programs and projects, such as Jorge-052, Rachel-343 and Balduin-324. Though teamworking difficulties occasionally arose, these mixed units often proved themselves to be very adaptable and versatile teams, even more so in the instances where they were issued equipment on par with the SPARTAN-IIs. Most of these teams were also connected to one another to varying degrees; Noble was, quite simply put, the main team of the project, given the highest priority and support; Royal, meanwhile, was the equivalent of Noble's twin, essentially acting as the latter's reserve and/or replacement pool, commonly cooperating in joint operations and switching members for separate missions; Libra, Gauntlet and Echo, on the other hand, were more distantly related to Noble than Royal, and though they occasionally fought alongside their sibling teams in joint operations, they rarely shared assets in-between the teams and had their missions managed by separate superiors; lastly, Gentry and Herald were hardly connected to the aforementioned teams at all, on the contrary being independently formed by different subcells within INDIGO-II - led by Codename: CANDLEMAKER and Captain Salomon Martin, respectively - and thus using different resources than those provided to their distant cousin teams. Subordinate units SPARTAN-III Alpha Company *Team Pegasus - Inactive (Survivors reassigned to Noble) *Team Mongoose - Inactive (Survivors reassigned to Noble) Beta Company *Team Oscar - Inactive (Survivors reassigned to Noble) *Kukri Team Gamma Company *Wolf Squad Headhunters *Team Juliet-Three - Inactive (KIA) *Team Echo-Two - Inactive (KIA) *Team Echo-Seven - Inactive (Members formerly of Teams Bravo-Two and Lima-Nine) *Team Delta-One *Winter Team *Baselard Team Mixed *Noble Team - Inactive (KIA) *Royal Team - Inactive *Libra Team *Gauntlet Team - Unknown (Post-Fall of Reach) *Echo Team - Unknown (Post-Fall of Reach) *Herald Team - Inactive (Disbanded) *Gentry Team *Amber Team- Active. Originally developed in parallel to INDIGO-II until its integration in 2554. JAVELIN-II *Team Bravado *Sakura Squad - Inactive (KIA) OLYMPIAN *Amethyst Team - Inactive (Disbanded) Remarks Category:Office of Naval Intelligence